The Project Schedule Part 4: Resource Assignments and Estimates

Once you have defined your Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) the next step in creating a schedule is to assign resources and estimates to each task (the lowest level items in your WBS). A starting point in assigning resources is to consult the “Roles & Responsibilities” matrix you created as part of the Project Charter. You are looking for the stakeholders that are in the category of “helping you execute your project”.

You may find that some WBS tasks need resources that have not yet been specifically identified as assigned to the project. In this case you will meet with the managers of the areas that have the resource expertise and agree on the assignment. In other cases you may need to contract for professional services. This should have been included in your Project Budget and the Procurement Plan. If not, you will have to use the formal Project Change Management process to alter the budget to include these services.

Microsoft Project allows you to assign resources to a task. You can also assign the percentage of the resource’s time that will be dedicated to the task. In addition, you can assign more than one resource to a given task.

Once you have resources assigned to a task you can attach estimates. You can estimate using “Duration” (the length of time the task will take independent of the resources assigned) or “Effort” (the amount of hours or days a task will take given undivided attention of the resources). Which one you use will depend on the type of project, type of task and organization culture. As a general rule I like to use “Effort” and let MS Project calculate the duration given the resource percent allocation and other tasks assigned to that resource.

When defining estimates, take into account the expertise of the resource(s) assigned to that task. An expert resource may complete a task much faster than a novice. Sometimes estimates are placed on a task prior to the resource assignment to get an idea of how the schedule will look. If you do this, remember to re-estimate once the specific resource is assigned.

There are many techniques to creating estimates. I will not address them all here. The most common are:

We’ve done this task before so we know how long it takes

The assigned resource supplies the estimate. Be careful with this one. People tend to be overly optimistic on how much time a task will take.

A small group of people with expertise in that task are asked to independently estimate the task, then the group discusses the discrepancies and comes to a consensus

Management may dictate the duration of the task in which case the PM may have to assign resources with more expertise or add resources (if feasible) to meet the deadline.

You can also use a 3-point estimate (optimistic, pessimistic and most likely) and calculate your estimate using PERT (I recommend you Google this term for the details). For a more advanced scheduling technique, you can investigate “Critical Chain and Buffer Management”. This is an advanced technique that will need organizational buy-in from the top down.